Sandwich Club: Raw BLT from Crudessence

A weekly series dedicated to anything that fits on a piece of bread. We deconstruct a different sandwich each week – from Mexican tortas to Lebanese pita kebabs to lobster guédilles – and tell you where to find it and what goes into making it.This week's sandwich: Raw BLT, $12 at Crudessence downtown

MONTREAL - Dietary terms like vegan, gluten-free and uncooked don’t instantly lend themselves to the world of sandwiches. In fact, there’s nothing instant about the raw BLT from Crudessence, a restaurant, retailer and culinary academy devoted to living foods (which means plant-based ingredients only, prepared using techniques designed to maintain maximum enzymes and nutrients). It takes a lot of prep, Crudessence president David Côté says of the raw-wich challenge. “It’s true that you can’t just say, ‘Hey, I want a sandwich!’ You need to have your stuff ready ahead of time, but you can prepare lots of bread and bacon beforehand – after that, there’s nothing to cook!” he notes. “If the challenge is that you have to make everything that goes into it, the fulfillment is you can say you really own that sandwich.”

The bread: Obviously a raw, animal-product-free, gluten-free mandate precludes baking. Enter the dehydrator. To create soft yet consistent shells for sandwiches, soaked almonds, sprouted buckwheat seeds and sun-dried tomatoes are made into a paste (A), spread out on sheets of anti-stick Paraflexx paper, cut to size, and then dehydrated for 16 hours.

The spread: The B in BLT is a big draw, and the no-animal-products edict means subbing out the bacon. In lieu of pork, Crudessence uses eggplant marinated in chipotle (for some smokiness), salt, cayenne, turmeric and apple cider vinegar, before going, you guessed it, into the dehydrator. It comes out looking like thin bacon crisps (B). Instead of egg-based mayo, the kitchen makes aioli based on soaked cashews – soaking makes the nuts easier to digest, Côté says – blended with lemon, garlic and capers (C). The tomato, lettuce and alfalfa sprouts (D) are all organic, and locally sourced when possible.

The secret: On Saturday, Crudessence is offering a full-day English-language workshop on the preparation of living foods, including smoothies, desserts and sandwich fixings like raw breads.

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